Cloud-based Web and Email Security Services Help Schools Protect Students and Staff from Emerging Online Threats

BOULDER, CO - March 26, 2010

Webroot, a leading Internet security provider for the consumer, enterprise and SMB markets, today announced that dozens of higher education institutions, including the University of Missouri, Residential Life, Dallas County Community College District and the Trinity School for Ministry, have selected cloud-based security services from Webroot to protect them from data loss, network downtime and other security threats.

At the University of Missouri, Residential Life, Missouri’s largest public research university, users were inadvertently clicking on malicious links or visiting sites that were infested with malware. The IT team – User Support Analyst Justin Harris and Support Systems Administrator Eric Leiss – were fighting an uphill battle; malware infections were coming in so fast that machines were being rendered unusable. Already strapped for resources, the team was rebuilding one or two machines per week, leaving no time for the other work to be done.

"Our endpoint security used to be enough, but it can’t keep up against today’s threats," said Harris. "We still need it for remediation, but we needed that extra layer of defense at the perimeter and selected Webroot® Web Security Service to protect us from the Web attack vector. We no longer have to re-image machines weekly and end users have not been affected – aside from being glad that the machines are running faster."

Dallas County Community College District, a long-time user of Webroot AntiSpyware Corporate Edition on the desktop, evaluated Webroot Email Security Service and saw immediate results. Not only was the IT staff impressed with the ease of implementation, but they also recorded an immediate reduction of spam. The service blocked as many as 60,000 more spam messages each day than both of the district’s previous anti-spam appliances combined.

"The results we saw during our initial trial of Webroot Email Security Service were so impressive that we decided to fully implement the service to our 9,000 faculty, staff and administrators before the trial was even complete," said Lilith Calbridge, network support specialist, Dallas County Community College District. "Users saw an immediate increase in productivity once their mailboxes were not cluttered with spam messages. With its advanced features and capabilities, this product is better suited for the needs of a large institution like Dallas County Community College District than any other system I have worked with."

The Trinity School for Ministry, a graduate school of religion located in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, was using another vendor’s antivirus software at the endpoint, but it was not stopping the infections. IT Manager Heather Henkel said things were getting so bad she had to find a new solution. The school chose the Webroot Web Security Service and replaced Kaspersky on the desktop with Webroot AntiSpyware Corporate Edition with AntiVirus. Since deploying the Webroot solutions in September 2009, Trinity has had a clean, malware-free network.

"Webroot security solutions have made my life easier," Henkel said. "We are saving users from being infected, which is a boost in productivity for everyone. It’s really a win-win. We haven’t had to call support yet for anything. It simply works and does what it says it does. You can’t ask for more than that!"

"Organizations of all sizes and types are experiencing threats that lurk on the Web," said Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at Webroot. "Places of higher education are no exception. We encourage businesses, government agencies and schools to adopt a layered approach to security. Filtering Web and email threats in the cloud increases network performance while simultaneously increasing overall security."

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